A healthy lifestyle does not depend on one unimpeachable authority.

T here won’t be an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the National Institutes of Health museum. The funds earmarked for the display honoring the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recently became a target of the Department of Government Efficiency.

It’s only the latest sign that America is moving on from its coronavirus fever dream. During that time, Fauci became a symbol of the American public health establishment’s monomaniacal zero-Covid mindset. He encouraged this with egomaniacal PR, such as poolside photoshoots, and a titanic self-conception according to which “I represent science.” His partisans obliged with fanatical devotion, all the way up to votive candles. His detractors accordingly treated him as a symbol as well — of everything that went wrong with our country’s Covid response.

Now the Fauci detractors have won. The confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Donald Trump’s health secretary places one of Fauci’s most prominent Covid-era critics atop the government’s health bureaucracy, with Trump’s blessing to “go wild” on health. It is an inevitable rebuke, and in certain ways a welcome one. But it is not without risks.

One can take pleasure in the public health establishment’s agita over Kennedy’s nomination and confirmation, given that its “experts” still haven’t realized how their actions caused vast economic and social damage and generated mass public discontent. “‘Terrifying’: Public Health Experts React to Senate’s Confirmation of RFK Jr. to Lead HHS,” a Time headline reads. “5 years after first COVID lockdown, Trump’s health policies worry public health experts,” Semafor reports. NBC News manages the more balanced, “Kennedy’s confirmation will breed more harm than good, public health experts say.” If this coverage is any indication, it is not just the public health establishment that has learned nothing about the risks of technocratic deference, but also its media votaries.

It is also impossible to deny the merit of some of Robert F. Kennedy’s crusades. There is an obesity crisis in this country: Nearly half of U.S. adults are obese. A whole lazar house of maladies and conditions flows from the general unhealthiness of the U.S. population, which the obesity rate reflects but does not entirely capture. Much of this is fed, quite literally, by a surfeit of food and drink whose consumption the government either subsidizes in policy or endorses in poor nutritional guidance. And it is a plausible critique of our medical system, whatever its merits, that it could do more to minimize or obviate preventable afflictions instead of just treating them once they have manifested.

But Kennedy is not perfect. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald described him as a “mixed bag”: “Admirable in his defense of free speech, especially when it came to rebutting the pseudo-expertise of the public health establishment during the Covid hysteria, eloquent in his criticism of lockdowns and masks, he nevertheless has a long history of feminized, New-Agey objections to sound medical interventions.” A National Review editorial listed other shortcomings, focusing on his record as a zealous abortion advocate. He claims to have changed views he expressed as recently as last year. But there is reason to doubt such a conversion, even if sincere, can adequately steel him for the immense and important task of driving the demons of wokeness out from the gargantuan Health and Human Services bureaucracy. The strongest arguments his supporters make in his favor add up to a different role within the health bureaucracy, not a posting atop it.

Such criticisms mean little to Kennedy’s active and vocal fans. Many of them are moms whose health-conscious and anti-establishment lifestyles and views attracted them to Kennedy’s promise to “make America healthy again.” They view Kennedy as a Trump-like figure, “someone whose wealth and influence allow him to speak the truth, regardless of whom they might offend,” as the New York Times put it. This inoculates him from criticism, in their eyes. And as with Trump and his voters, they deserve respect; their cause is righteous.

Yet some caution is in order now that Kennedy has actually taken up his post. It would be unwise to view his appointment as a panacea. Some of Kennedy’s warnings about the reality of Americans’ ill health are sound. Perhaps there are things the department can do — or stop doing — to act on these realities.

But his view that there is a conspiracy to “poison” us shares with populist arguments a twofold defect: a convenient empowerment of those who offer the diagnosis, and an agency-reducing diminution of the “people.” The former defect could cause his stewardship to resemble in practice the technocratic governance masquerading as selflessness for which his family is known. The latter defect is particularly dangerous in a health context. In even the most optimistic scenario Kennedy could envision, it will still be incumbent upon individuals to make healthy choices in their own lives. To the extent he does not emphasize this, he is, in fact, not radical enough.

The MAHA moms, and others who have accepted Kennedy as their standard-bearer, may not be giving themselves enough credit. Rich Lowry recently described Kennedy as the person who “came up with” this movement. But living healthily, even as a political cause, did not come into existence with him. Many, including his fans, were already living this way before he rushed to the front of their wholesome parade.

One can understand their gratitude for having a prominent public figure speak for them. But a healthy lifestyle does not — cannot — depend on one person who will eventually no longer be in charge of HHS. It relies on people’s commitment to it, independent of — and, as we saw during the Covid era, sometimes in spite of — public authority. It would be unfortunate if the welcome reaction against the excesses of public health, exemplified by Anthony Fauci, led to the enshrinement of another figure as unimpeachable. Fauci isn’t science. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn’t health.